


These Things Always End Like This

by WeShallSee



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Catholic Bucky Barnes, Developing Relationship, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, in which they Arent genderswapped this time but theyre still useless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 01:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17013033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeShallSee/pseuds/WeShallSee
Summary: “God, we’re dumb. Steve, doll, we’re the biggest damn dunces on the planet!” Bucky huffed out a laugh, Bucky framed his own face in his hands like he was shocked or about to hide away in mortification or both, Bucky looked like he was one wrong glance away from starting to cry.But still, he teased. “I’m hurt, honestly. You saw me comin’ home every night to sleep beside you and you thought I was some good Catholic boy who’d marry young and marry straight?”





	These Things Always End Like This

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Pick a Place and Read](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16982169) by [ChaoticWeevil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticWeevil/pseuds/ChaoticWeevil). 



> this fic is ooc bc the Real bucky would hear steve talking about relating to 1930s gay romance novels and go "oh lol i get it. he means it in a straight way :)"

Steve was learning how to avoid micromanaging life as a whole, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one hell of a learning curve. And if the way Bucky snarled at door-to-door salesmen and shoved duffle bags of guns and knives in every corner of the townhouse was any sign, any control Steve let go of was more than made up for.

It was reassuring. It was worrying as all get out.

Steve was clinging it all, though, like it could be some _sign_ that Bucky wanted their life to stay stable. Chances were, it was a sign that Bucky still didn’t feel safe with him. Steve was willing to hope, though, especially when most days, Bucky was increasing his trust in Steve grain by grain, one miniscule moment at a time.

 _Most_ days. It was Sundays that were the hardest—Something in Bucky seemed to stir, like the anxiety of church was rearing it’s ugly head through years of habitual attended services, tugging and pulling at him.

Sometimes Bucky stayed put on one corner of the couch, eyes stubbornly fixed on whatever sitcom Steve put on. Sometimes he was flighty, though. Couldn’t make himself stay put through the morning. Like today.

Bucky’d woken him up with a terse greeting of, “It’s time to go,” and made for the front door to stock up on supplies. One knife in each of his boots, another two affixed to his belt. As Steve pulled on a sweater and stumbled out of the bedroom to grab his shoes, Bucky reached for a pistol to tuck in his holster—And stopped. He swung his head up to look at Steve, hair still frizzed from bedhead.

“What do you think?”

Steve blinked, letting his hands fall away from him shoelaces to try and puzzle out what answer Bucky wanted. His index finger was tapping the sleek edge of the pistol. The question’s subtext was clear. Take or leave. Armed for a gun fight or a knife fight.

Bucky rarely considered Steve’s viewpoint on whether a situation needed more weapons or less. Which was fair. Only one of them was jacked up on enough _well-made_ serum to inspire a nation.

“Depends on where you were planning on taking us, don’t you think?” Steve turned back to his sneakers, fiddling with the laces more to look a little busy, to give Bucky time to consider where they were actually going to go. He liked Bucky’s uptick of choices lately. Something tamped down but undeniably fond in him went warm with appreciation whenever Bucky voiced his opinions, no matter how fiercely Steve called that affection simple friendship.

“Museum, then food. At that coffee shop with the cheesecake you like, maybe. So,” another terse gesture to the gun. “Should I?” Steve made his shrug as loose and unjudgmental as he could.

“Take it or leave it. Which museum?” He got up to grab his keys, his wallet—Bucky’d already stashed his own in some interior pocket of his jacket, no doubt.

Bucky tucked the pistol back into the bag, double checking that the safety was off. The knives would be enough for today, it seemed.

“You know which museum. I heard they added more artifacts from our lives and all that. I want to… See my progress.” He admitted it like it was an embarrassing little secret. Like Steve was somehow inconvenienced by watching the way Bucky’s whole expression lit up when he recognized how much Steve hated that damn showbiz getup, or how scratchy the sheets in their old apartment got in the summer.

And in the end, the gun was left behind. Steve offered up his hand to Bucky like an olive branch, and miraculously, despite decades of brainwashing and it being a damn _Sunday_ , Bucky took it and helped him up without hesitation. Steve locked the door behind them and led them out into the sunshine.

 

It wasn’t until they got home that Bucky fulfilled the last ritual of Sunday: he tracked down where he’d hidden his old diary away.

The book _used_ to be beautiful, with this soft blue cover and white detailing, but it had gone sun-bleached and stained over the years. Bucky taped reports in it, from HYDRA agents, from S.H.I.E.L.D. therapists, he cobbled his life together page by page.

And slowly, Bucky had started to read aloud the parts he remembered. Months ago, Steve thought it wasn’t for him, he’d politely excused himself to get a cup of tea, or tried to bury his nose in his own book and focus on a fictional tragedy rather than a real one. The guilt of it all weighed down on him, pressed him down—He _still_ had to fight to offer up a reason to let Bucky remember in peace.

This time, Bucky cut off the excuses at the source. Just carefully squeezed Steve’s arm and made a beeline for the bedroom before Steve could so much as toe off his shoes. Bucky only paused to grab his diary and set each one of the knives on his person on the bedside table before he hooked his metal arm around Steve’s waist to pulled the both of them to the bed.

“I can’t read aloud tonight,” he confessed, like Steve could think about speaking aloud for anything other than asking for a kiss or two. Or six. Steve pulled off his shoes and pulled back from Bucky’s arm just enough to sit cross-legged on the comforter, nodding his consent.

“We can just look.”

“No, I—” Bucky scrunched his free hand up in his hair, wrinkling his nose. Steve was so damn glad that habit stayed, that frustrated expression of a day at work and an evening of dragging Steve out of fights. “I want _you_ to tell me things. All I could write about back then was you. No matter the topic, it circled ‘round, aimed right for you all over again.” He thumbed through the yellowing pages of the journal like he was trying to avoid eye contact, and maybe he was. His finger kept landing on Steve’s name. Over and over again.

Steve had heard most of this book, the descriptions, the prayers that Steve _wouldn’t_ learn the contents of the diary—But he’d never looked at a single word that Bucky didn’t offer up first. He’d accepted Bucky’s halting self-editing as he read, side-stepping phrases he couldn’t remember or couldn’t address at the moment or possibly both. And that was alright with Steve. He could be content. He was _awful_ good at being content around Bucky.

“The point is,” Bucky said, “I never learn what you thought about me. It’s great to see my own handwriting explaining everything out to me and all, but handwriting can be forged. Someone could’ve forced me to write things.”

“And no one could force me to say things?”

“Not when it comes to me,” Bucky said, and the confidence in his voice was enough to make Steve set a hand on the comforter and twist, picking at the strands. It felt like Bucky was hurling himself off a building with the hurried hope that Steve would be there to catch him. And Steve would. Every damn time, he would. “Tell me, Steve. 1932. You and I met. What did you think?”

Steve paused. Hesitated. Relented.

“…Thought you were a guardian angel. My head hit that brick wall so hard that everything felt too bright to stand it, so I tried to blink the stars out of my eyes and looked up at the sky and there you were. Looking concerned as hell. Kinda set the stage for us, huh?”

Bucky’s smile was a fragile type of hopeful. But he nodded, once, firm. “I tried to… I tried to get you ice? From the man who owned the grocer’s, Mister—Something. His name was--” Bucky’s hand in his hair went into a tight fist again, so Steve leaned just close enough to smooth his fingers over the knuckles, easing the tension away again, just a little.

“Buck, _I_ don’t remember his name. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“His name was Mr. Fletcher.”

Steve blinked. “Well, there you go. Uh, you said somethin’ about me looking real nice, I thought you were trying to be a smartass, but you walked me home anyway. Much appreciated, by the way. I know how pissed I used to get whenever I lost a scrap.”

“You mean every last time you tried to fight? Yeah. Yeah, I can remember _that._ ” Bucky wasn’t quite laughing, but his smile stayed bright, and that was more than good enough for Steve. The grin froze over the second Bucky closed the diary, though. Steve, in return, quelled him own nearly-laugh. “I want to know something.”

“Anything.”

“When I went off to war, when I got captured, fell from the train, ran away from you when I was with HYDRA, left you alone the second I pulled you out of the river—” The words hit Steve too hard for him to do much more then blink, but Bucky pressed on. The upset tore at the lining of Steve’s stomach for that, making him shift. “I kept leaving you, Steve. I couldn’t ever write about it, not really, so how did you…”

“Deal with it?” Steve snapped, harsher than he’d expected. “Cope? Handle it? _Badly_. Got drunk when I could and tried to anyway after the serum.” He shook his head, leaning back to try and let the tension leak out of the conversation. “Look, I don’t want to discuss this, I--”

Bucky’s expression crumpled into itself. He let his hands fall to grasp for Steve’s, refusing to actually take him hands but asking, pleading. “I meant how did you keep wanting me to _come back_?”

Steve first took Bucky’s hands in his. Then took a breath, forcing his voice to steady out again. “The thing is, you didn’t _leave_ me. Not really. I was furious when you went off to war, sure. _God,_ I wanted to drag you back by your lapels and make you take me with you then and there. But I needed my medicines. We needed money. The both of us knew we damn well _had_ to fight, it was in our blood, wasn’t your fault that I couldn’t get well enough to follow you. Can’t blame yourself from getting captured any of those times. Can’t blame yourself for falling. You only left me of your own devices once.”

“But I still _left_. Even when I was brainwashed, that was still my body leaving.” Bucky had set his jaw, a movement that was just short of a pout and ten times as stubborn. Steve couldn’t help the soft, wounded noise he made in return. “What, were you just expecting it after a while?”

“Think I had enough of those off-brand romance paperbacks from our day to know, Buck. When someone—When a guy like me likes a fella like you this much, there’s only three ways it can end. Death or being forced apart. Things always end like this, James.”

“A fella like me,” Bucky echoed, hands so frozen against Steve’s that Steve himself let go first, tucking his hands behind his back like he’d stolen something. He sure felt like he had.

“Sorry,” he gasped, stumbling out of bed. “ _Sorry,_ I need to— Gonna go for a walk.” He fled the bedroom before he could think, pulling on rainboots rather than risk going back into the bedroom to grab his sneakers again.

He tried to hunt down his keys, searching near-frantically, suddenly and fully understanding why Bucky liked to excuse himself to run wild in New York for a few hours every now and then. He didn’t have a coherent thought until Bucky’s fluffy socked foot tapped him side as he lay face-down on the kitchen floor, searching under the fridge. Steve slowly pressed his hands over the back of him head like he was sheltering himself from a bomb.

“We’re a house full of runaways,” Bucky decided. “I think you just told me that you’re sweet on guys? I think you just tried to claim out of date lavender novels proved that we’re both gonna end up tragically? ‘Cause, uh, I kind of thought you read enough modern literature to know death and separation aren’t the only options, Steve.”

Steve rolled over onto his back, galoshes squeaking against the tile floor. Not even bothering to shelter himself anymore. He’d gone God knows how long keeping his unfortunately fond tendencies under wraps, and he went and blurted them out the second Bucky said a few touchy phrases. Bucky, on the other hand, was slowly looking delighted.

“God, we’re dumb. Steve, doll, we’re the biggest damn dunces on the _planet!_ ” Bucky huffed out a laugh, Bucky framed his own face in his hands like he was shocked or about to hide away in mortification or both, Bucky looked like he was one wrong glance away from starting to cry, but still, he teased. “I’m hurt, honestly. You saw me comin’ home every night to sleep beside you and you thought I was some good Catholic boy who’d marry young and marry straight?”

“What?”

“’Things always end like this,’ my _ass._ Look at me.”

Steve did, eyes wide, feeling more like a scolded child then someone able to offer up more of a response then another, “ _What?_ ”

“Steve, it all clicked just then. Lemme tell you what we’ve been missing. You think I like dating around, huh? Throwing myself at whatever gorgeous gal I see?”

Now it was Steve’s turn to set his jaw, sitting up and lifting himself up onto his knees to argue that Bucky shouldn’t care about how many girls he dates, to ask who the hell told Bucky that he was ‘throwing himself’ at anyone.

Bucky just sat down right beside him on the kitchen floor and grabbed him by the waist again, looking too jubilant to allow Steve to speak harshly. Besides, he wasn’t done explaining. “Steve, baby, I dated those girls so no one would talk bad about the two of us. I wanted to live with you for all my years, even if that meant accepting a date from Cindy. _Cindy,_ who smacked the cat out by the alley with a mop. And you went and thought I could never like guys, didn’t you?”

“Well, I— _Yes,_ but you’re too—”

Bucky, the personification of infuriating, _shushed him._ “Stop it. I’m on a roll here. You know how rare it is that I _understand_ shit like this? I told you to look at me, none of that peering around in your own head to figure out the answer. I’m right here and I’ll tell you. I like all kinds of fellas. I like _you._ And I never wanted to go and fuck things up by assuming you might just like me. Do you understand?”

Steve nodded, dumbstruck. He was still stuck on those lines, though. ‘I like all kinds of fellas. I like _you.’_ Echoing and turning over and over again in Steve’s mind as he struggled to comprehend it all. This was decades of bitter thoughts being written over in nine words. He needed to curl up in some quiet room and scribble over his sketchbook until he could _actually_ understand.

“You seem a lot more, uh… Articulate. Compared to this morning,” was all he could manage. Bucky grinned up at him until Steve couldn’t help but smile back, shuffling a little closer on his knees so he could study every last hint of expression on Bucky’s face. It was an old habit, from back when Steve’s eyesight was going but glasses were too much of an extraneous cost to afford. Now, Bucky just kept his arms looped around Steve and didn’t bother to guard his expression, and that was enough for Steve to let go of the tension in the pit of his stomach. It was enough. “So you like guys.”

“One guy in particular.”

“ _Damn_ it, stop being cheesy!” Steve accused with a nervous laugh, tipping his head forward just enough to brush foreheads with Bucky for one split second, until Bucky’s hair spilled into both their faces and he pulled back to brush it away. “I’m trying to get the facts all together. You like guys, you like _me._ And you’re not saying that in a friendly way.”

“Sorry, does that sound like a declaration of _friendship?_ No, sir, I haven’t been waiting for decades to tell you I’m just a good friend. And I hate to be pushy, but you mind telling me how you’re feeling about this whole mess? About me _?_ I’d appreciate some feedback on whether to, uh—Stop hanging off of you.” He dropped him arms away, pressing his hands to the tile instead, but Steve made up the difference. Draped him arms around Bucky’s shoulders and pressed a careful, careful kiss to Bucky’s forehead.

“That answer your question?”

“Steve, you goddamn—We’ve been kissing each other on the cheek since we were kids, that ain’t no _answer._ I want words. Please.”

Steve, because he was insufferable and petty and all things atrocious, shushed Bucky in return. With a stupid smile on his face. “What, my panic over the plots of vintage homosexual romances wasn’t enough to tip you off? I like you. It’s gonna take me a while, though. To really wrap my head around this and all, I’m gonna need some time.”

“We got nothin’ but time, Steve. Read over the rest of my diary, why don’t you? Without me there to self-edit. Might be a few phrases in there to help the both of us out. Might’ve been pulled away from you too many times to count, yeah, but I always come back. Take your ‘things always end like this’ and turn over the meaning, punk.”

“Gimme a second to settle from the whiplash, god. Just this morning I was convincing you not to bring a pistol to a history museum.”

“Sunday morning’s for fleeing church. Sunday night’s for diary entries and some bona fide realizations,” Bucky said, laying back on the floor. “If you’re too shell-shocked to go somewhere comfortable, don’t blame me when we get dust bunnies in our hair.”

Steve didn’t. He could let go of that bit of control, he could work with the learning curve of rewriting his past with the realization of Bucky’s fondness. It was reassuring. It was enough to make him thump down onto the tile next to Bucky and blink up at the ceiling and slowly, slowly accept that Sundays might just be nice.


End file.
